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DEAR ANN

A beautifully written homage to the 1960s by a mature writer at the top of her literary power.

Mason’s first novel since The Girl in the Blue Beret (2011) is a deeply moving meditation on one woman’s life choices and the road she didn’t take.

Onboard a cruise ship in 2017, a troubled Ann Workman ponders her past. What if she had heeded her old college professor Albert’s advice and gone to Stanford for graduate school instead of heading to Harpur College in upstate New York? It was the 1960s, and California was “at the center of the universe," as Albert enthused in a letter, one of many that Ann has saved over 50 years and that populate the narrative. How would Ann’s life have changed? Fusing her memories with a writer's imagination, she creates a new storyline in which a naïve young woman drives west "with an innocent boldness" to Palo Alto. Exploring this new world that is “both tantalizing and threatening,” Ann gradually comes out of her shell, especially after she meets Jimmy, the “Real Thing” she has longed for. He too is an outsider, ashamed of his suburban Chicago background and intrigued by her rural Kentucky roots. Bonding over literature and music, they embark on an intense relationship against the backdrop of a Stanford campus “quivering with spontaneous demonstrations and teach-ins” against the escalating Vietnam War. Through this poignant romance, Mason vividly evokes the exhilaration and excitement of being young during such tumultuous cultural and political changes. It's no wonder that years later Chip, a friend of Jimmy and Ann, refers to that era as "the best time of my life, and of course the saddest." As Ann reassesses her choices, the reader senses that the 80-year-old author is using this haunting novel to also take stock of her own life.

A beautifully written homage to the 1960s by a mature writer at the top of her literary power.

Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-06298-665-8

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: June 25, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020

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BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL

A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.

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Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).

In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.

A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.

Pub Date: June 10, 2025

ISBN: 9781250320520

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025

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MY FRIENDS

A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.

An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.

Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”

A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.

Pub Date: May 6, 2025

ISBN: 9781982112820

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025

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